


For the Girl with the Lion's Heart

by speedboat



Series: Studies [3]
Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Gen, the tiniest mention of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2530880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speedboat/pseuds/speedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha is a mother, which is odd, because she's never really had one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Girl with the Lion's Heart

Martha is everyone’s mother. She is the healthy friend, the one who brings a vegetable plate to the World Cup party and is constantly pushing kale chips onto Ilse. She’ll take up taekwondo one week and rock-climbing the next. Her hair turns the prettiest chestnut brown in the summer. 

She has the weirdest sense of humor, this combined love of puns and sarcasm that makes you stop and wonder about her. She’s gotten several eye infections from forgetting to take her contacts out at night, because she’s always so tired when she gets home from her job. She’s a forensic accountant set to make partner at her firm. Logically, Martha could totally have her own place, but it’s out of the goodness of her heart that she lets Ilse live with her, even pretending that the meager part of rent Ilse pays actually helps her out financially. She doesn’t ever bake.

Martha is the messenger Ilse will shoot, because she always checks the answering machine for replies from Ilse’s auditions. Ilse will snap when it’s a no and whine when it’s a yes and she never thanks Martha, but Martha knows Ilse loves her more than anybody else. She leaves the room when she’s upset, just walks away like she has to take time to remind herself she’s allowed to have an opinion. Melchior always seems to be the one that makes her walk away, but when she comes back, he’s the first to apologize.

She’ll excuse even the worst behavior from her cat, Karl. She fights quiet and calm and mean. She cut her hair short after her emancipation and hasn’t had it curl past her ears in nine years. Her football knowledge in insurmountable. She spits statistics like a machine, like someone who was taught football by a professional.

(Her father taught her, are the words she won’t say when people at parties ask her how she knows so much.)

Martha is everyone’s mother, the nurturing bearer-of-bad-news, but sometimes Ilse wonders if she needs one herself.


End file.
